Rock, Paper, Scissors #2
We each start out as paper, I suspect—
just a name mused across some blank scrap
to tease out the way your identity will come
to sound and soon suit you, and before
you know it you’re being torn from the woman
who dreamed up your name, who slept
like a rock the night you first fused into her,
though she couldn’t have known at the time
what was settling inside her like a stone,
or how the weight of a child could sink her
in so many ways. She starts out as your rock,
looking after you as carefully as a swan folded
from origami, but quickly you find how easily she can
be cut or crumpled, and so you slice your own
path into the world, finding yourself
forever wedged between the hard places.
And the shortcuts that were supposed
to make everything easier just look
like knife slashes on a weathered map
where some other person, trying to roll
through this life, got fed up with the constant
figuring, the tedious, endless balancing
of life’s equations and remainders.
What are your options in the end?
Dear John or Jane? Cut yourself loose?
Get stoned and cope? The world isn’t
without hope, but there’s no best choice—
it all depends on what you do with your fists.
